Name: Ties.
Age: Originated in the early 17th century.
Appearance: They’re back.
Where did they go? The fashion for wearing a suit with an open-collar shirt, combined with a Covid-inspired trend for working from home, had driven neckties to the edge of extinction.
And now they’ve been saved by some kind of selective breeding programme? They’ve been saved by a fashion-conscious younger generation returning to more formal codes of dress.
Do you have any evidence to support this claim? According to the menswear retailer TM Lewin, year-on-year sales of ties increased by 200% this summer.
I didn’t realise TM Lewin still existed. It’s also back from the brink: after closing all its physical stores during the pandemic, the company is beginning to reopen some sites.
So ties are in? Not everywhere – news of the resurgence comes just weeks after the House of Lords relaxed its rules to allow men to appear tieless in the chamber.
The Lords out of step with fashion trends? How did this deplorable state of affairs come about? It’s hard to imagine, especially when all they had to do was nothing.
How times have changed. Think of it as a generational backlash – the informal, open-collar look is now the preserve of well-off, middle-aged men. Young people don’t want to dress like the boss, so they dress up.
Where do ties come from anyway? They have their origins in the cravats worn by – and named after – Croatian mercenaries who served in France during the thirty years’ war (1618-48).
Nice story, but a cravat is not a tie. Fashionable neckwear evolved over the centuries, from the stock to the scarf to the neckerchief. The necktie we know today was patented in 1922 by a New York tailor called Jesse Langsdorf.
So neckwear stopped evolving more than a century ago? What changed over time was the fashion for certain lengths, widths, patterns and knots: the four-in-hand in the mid-Victorian era, the windsor between the world wars, the half-windsor in the 1950s.
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Are any other endangered formal accessories being resurrected by impressionable young people, or is it just ties? Apparently, they’ve also forsaken trainers in favour of wearing leather loafers, oxfords and derbies to work.
That cannot be. It’s true – sneaker sales in the US have stagnated. And Cruz and Romeo Beckham have been spotted wearing suits with trouser braces.
What next? Top hats? Spats? Honestly, don’t give gen Z any ideas.
Do say: “The once-shunned necktie has returned, with the retail menswear sector riding on its coattails.”
Don’t say: “Can coattails be far behind?”
Extracted and lightly reformatted for readability. · Source: pt